Introduction to Italian:
Italian derives diachronically from Latin and is the closest national language to Latin. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian has retained the contrast between short and long consonants which existed in Latin. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. In particular, among the Romance languages, Italian is considered to be the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary. Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Rhaeto-Romance and 77% with Romanian.
Writing system
Italian is written in the Latin alphabet. The letters J, K, W, X and Y are not considered part of the standard Italian alphabet, but appear in loanwords (such as jeans, whisky, taxi). X has become a commonly used letter in genuine Italian words with the prefix extra-. J in Italian is an old-fashioned orthographic variant of I, appearing in the first name "Jacopo" as well as in some Italian place names, e.g., the towns of Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, Jesolo, Jesi, Ajaccio, among numerous others, and in the alternative spelling Mar Jonio (also spelled Mar Ionio) for the Ionian Sea. J may also appear in many words from different dialects, but its use is discouraged in contemporary Italian, and it is not part of the standard 21-letter contemporary Italian alphabet. Each of these foreign letters has an Italian equivalent spelling: gi or i for j, c or ch for k (including chilometro for kilometer in prose), u or v for w (depending on what sound it makes), s, ss, or cs for x, and i for y. (In informal Internet usage and texts, it goes back the other way; for example, ch is replaced with k.)
Italian uses the acute accent over the letter E (as in perché, why/because) to indicate a front mid-closed vowel, and the grave accent (as in tè, tea) to indicate a front mid-open vowel. The grave accent is also used on letters A, I, O, and U to mark stress when it falls on the final vowel of a word (for instance gioventù, youth). Typically, the penultimate syllable is stressed. If syllables other than the last one are stressed, the accent is not mandatory, unlike in Spanish, and, in virtually all cases, it is omitted. When the word is potentially ambiguous, the accent is sometimes used for disambiguation, for example prìncipi ("princes"), but princìpi ("principles"), and è ("is"), but e ("and"). This is, however, not compulsory for polysyllabic words. Rare words with three or more syllables can confuse Italians themselves, and the pronunciation of Istanbul is a common example of a word in which placement of stress is not clearly established. Turkish, like French, tends to put the accent on the ultimate syllable, but Italian doesn't. So we can hear "Istànbul" or "Ìstanbul". Another instance is the
The letter H at the beginning of a word is used to distinguish ho, hai, ha, hanno (present indicative of avere, 'to have') from o ('or'), ai ('to the'), a ('to'), anno ('year'). In the spoken language this letter is always silent in the words given above, even though in ho it changes the pronunciation making the vowel open. H is also used in combinations with other letters (see below), but no phoneme [h] exists in Italian. In foreign words entered in common use, like "hotel" or "hovercraft", the H is commonly silent, so they are pronounced /oˈtɛl/ and /ˈɔverkraft/
The letter Z represents /dz/, for example: zanzara /dzanˈdzaːra/ (mosquito), or /ts/, for example: nazione /natˈtsjoːne/ (nation), depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs. The same goes for S, which can represent /s/ or /z/. However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution everywhere except between two vowels in the same word, and even in that environment there are extremely few minimal pairs, so that this distinction is being lost in many varieties.
The letters c and g represent affricates: /tʃ/ as in "chair" and /dʒ/ as in "gem", respectively, before the front vowels I and E. They are pronounced as plosives /k/, /ɡ/ (as in "call" and "gall") otherwise. Front/back vowel rules for C and G are similar in French, Romanian, Spanish, and to some extent English (including Old English). Swedish and Norwegian have similar rules for K and G. (See also palatalization.)
However, an H can be added between C or G and E or I to convert the preceding consonant to a plosive, and an I can be added between C or G and A, O or U to signal that the consonant is an affricate. For example:
| | Before back vowel (A, O, U) | Before front vowel (I, E) | ||
| Plosive | C | caramella /karaˈmɛlla/ | CH | china /ˈkina/ |
| G | gallo /ˈɡallo/ | GH | ghiro /ˈɡiro/ | |
| Affricate | CI | ciaramella /tʃaraˈmɛlla/ | C | Cina /ˈtʃina/ |
| GI | giallo /ˈdʒallo/ | G | giro /ˈdʒiro/ | |
Note that the H is silent in the digraphs CH and GH, as also the I in cia, cio, ciu and even cie is not pronounced as a separate vowel, unless it carries the primary stress. For example, it is silent in ciao /ˈtʃa.o/ and cielo /ˈtʃɛ.lo/, but it is pronounced in farmacia /ˌfar.maˈtʃi.a/ and farmacie /ˌfar.maˈtʃi.e/.
There are three other special digraphs in Italian: GN, GL and SC. GN represents /ɲ/. GL represents /ʎ/ only before i, and never at the beginning of a word, except in the personal pronoun and definite article gli. (Compare with Spanish ñ and ll, Portuguese nh and lh.) SC represents fricative /ʃ/ before i or e. Except in the speech of some Northern Italians, all of these are normally geminate between vowels.
In general, there is a clear one-to-one correspondence between letters or digraphs and phonemes; in standard varieties of Italian, there is little allophonic variation. The most notable exceptions are assimilation of /n/ in point of articulation before consonants, assimilatory voicing of /s/ to following voiced consonants, and vowel length (vowels are long in stressed open syllables – except at the end of words, and short elsewhere) — compare with the enormous number of allophones of the English phoneme /t/. Spelling is mostly phonemic and usually difficult to mistake, given a clear pronunciation. Exceptions exist, especially in foreign borrowings. There are fewer cases of dyslexia than among speakers of languages such as English, and the concept of a spelling bee is strange to Italians.
Geographic distribution
The total speakers of Italian as a maternal language are between 70 and 80 million. The speakers who use Italian as a second or cultural language are estimated at around 150 million.
Speakers: Maternal language: 65 - 75 million Cultural language: c. 120-150 million
Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, spoken mainly in the cantons of Ticino and part of Graubünden (Grigioni in Italian), which together are a region referred to as Italian Switzerland. It is also official language with Croatian and Slovenian in some areas of Istria, where an Italian minority exists. It is the primary language of the Vatican City and is widely used and taught in Monaco and Malta. It served as
Italian is also spoken by some in former Italian colonies in Africa (Libya and Eritrea). However, its use has sharply dropped off since the colonial period. In Eritrea, Italian is widely understood. In fact, for 50 years, during the colonial period, Italian was the language of education, but as of 1997[update], there is only one Italian-language school remaining, with 470 pupils. The name of the only Italian-language school in
Italian and Italian dialects are widely used by Italian immigrants and many of their descendants (see Italians) living throughout Western Europe (especially France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg), the United States, Canada, Australia, and Latin America (especially Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela).
In the United States, Italian speakers are most commonly found in five cities: Boston (7,000), Chicago (12,000), the Miami region (27,000), New York City (140,000), and Philadelphia (15,000).[27] According to the United States Census in 2000, over 1 million Italian Americans spoke Italian at home, with the largest concentrations (nearly half) found in the states of New York (294,271) and New Jersey (116,365). In Canada, Italian is the fourth most commonly spoken language, with 661,000 speakers (or about 2.1% of the population) according to the 2006 Census. Particularly large Italian-speaking communities are found in Montreal (c. 179,000) and Toronto (c. 262,000).[12] Italian is the second most commonly spoken language in
Influence and derived languages
From the late 19th to the mid 20th century, thousands of Italians settled in
In some cases, colonies were established where variants of Italian dialects were used, and some continue to use a derived dialect. An example is Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where Talian is used, and in the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continuing to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Another example is Cocoliche, an Italian-Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, and Lunfardo.
Rioplatense Spanish, and particularly the speech of the city of Buenos Aires, has intonation patterns that resemble those of Italian dialects, due to the fact that Argentina has had a continuous large influx of Italian settlers since the second half of the 19th century; initially primarily from Northern Italy; then, since the beginning of the twentieth century, mostly from Southern Italy.
Italian as a lingua franca
Starting in late medieval times, Italian language variants replaced Latin to become the primary commercial language in much of Europe and the
During the Renaissance,
Dialects
In
Many Italian dialects may be considered as historical languages in their own right. These include recognized language groups such as Friulian, Neapolitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian, and others, and regional variants of these languages such as Calabrian. The distinction between dialect and language has been made by scholars (such as Francesco Bruni): on the one hand are the languages that made up the Italian koine; and on the other, those which had very little or no part in it, such as Albanian, Greek, German, Ladin, and Occitan, which are still spoken by minorities.
Non-standard dialects are not generally used for mass communication and are usually limited to native speakers in informal contexts. In the past, speaking in dialect was often deprecated as a sign of poor education. In parts of
Vowels
Italian has seven vowel phonemes: /a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/, represented by five letters: "a, e, i, o, u". The pairs /e/-/ɛ/, and /o/-/ɔ/ are seldom distinguished in writing and often confused, even though most varieties of Italian employ both phonemes consistently. Compare, for example standard "perché" [perˈke] (why, because) and "senti" [ˈsɛnti] (you hear), as pronounced by most central and southern speakers, with [perˈkɛ] and [ˈsenti], employed by most northern speakers. As a result, the usage is strongly indicative of a person's origin. The standard (Tuscan) usage of these vowels is listed in vocabularies, and employed outside
In general, vowel combinations usually pronounce each vowel separately. Diphthongs exist (e.g. uo, iu, ie, ai), but are limited to an unstressed u or i before or after a stressed vowel.
The unstressed u in a diphthong approximates the English semivowel w, and the unstressed i approximates the semivowel y. E.g.: buono [ˈbwɔːno], ieri [ˈjɛːri].
Triphthongs exist in Italian as well, like "continuiamo" ("we continue"). Three vowel combinations exist only in the form semiconsonant (/j/ or /w/), followed by a vowel, followed by a desinence vowel (usually /i/), as in miei, suoi, or two semiconsonants followed by a vowel, as the group -uia- exemplified above, or -iuo- in the word aiuola.
Mobile diphthongs
Many Latin words with a short e or o have Italian counterparts with a mobile diphthong (ie and uo respectively). When the vowel sound is stressed, it is pronounced and written as a diphthong; when not stressed, it is pronounced and written as a single vowel.
So Latin focus gave rise to Italian fuoco (meaning both "fire" and "optical focus"): when unstressed, as in focale ("focal") the "o" remains alone. Latin pes (more precisely its accusative form pedem) is the source of Italian piede (foot): but unstressed "e" was left unchanged in pedone (pedestrian) and pedale (pedal). From Latin iocus comes Italian giuoco ("play", "game"), though in this case gioco is more common: giocare means "to play (a game)". From Latin homo comes Italian uomo (man), but also umano (human) and ominide (hominid). From Latin ovum comes Italian uovo (egg) and ovaie (ovaries). (The same phenomenon occurs in Spanish: juego (play, game) and jugar (to play), nieve (snow) and nevar (to snow)).
Consonants
Two symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced consonant, respectively.
| Consonants of Italian | ||||||
| | ||||||
| m | | n | | ɲ | | |
| p, b | | t̪, d̪ | | | k, ɡ | |
| | | t̪s̪, d̪z̪ | tʃ, dʒ | | | |
| | f, v | s, z | ʃ, (ʒ) | | | |
| | | r | | | | |
| | | l | | ʎ | | |
| | | | | j | w | |
Nasals undergo assimilation when followed by a consonant, e.g., when preceding a velar (/k/ or /ɡ/) only [ŋ] appears, etc.
Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /ʃ/, /ts/, /dz/, /ʎ/ /ɲ/, which are always geminate, and /z/ which is always single. Geminate plosives and affricates are realised as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realized as lengthened continuants. The flap consonant /ɾ/ is typically dialectal. The correct standard pronunciation is [r].
Of special interest to the linguistic study of Italian is the Gorgia Toscana, or "Tuscan Throat", the weakening or lenition of certain intervocalic consonants in Tuscan dialects. See also Syntactic doubling.
The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ is only present in loanwords. For example, garage [ɡaˈraːʒ].
Assimilation
Italian has few diphthongs, so most unfamiliar diphthongs that are heard in foreign words (in particular, those beginning with vowel "a", "e", or "o") will be assimilated as the corresponding diaeresis (i.e., the vowel sounds will be pronounced separately). Italian phonotactics do not usually permit verbs and polysyllabic nouns to end with consonants, excepting poetry and song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds.
Grammar
Common variations in the writing systems
Some variations in the usage of the writing system may be present in practical use. These are scorned by educated people, but they are so common in certain contexts that knowledge of them may be useful.
Usage of x instead of per: this is very common among teenagers and in SMS abbreviations. The multiplication operator is pronounced "per" in Italian, and so it is sometimes used to replace the word "per", which means "for"; thus, for example, "per te" ("for you") is shortened to "x te" (compare with English "4 U"). Words containing per can also have it replaced with x: for example, perché (both "why" and "because") is often shortened as xché or xké or x' (see below). This usage might be useful to jot down quick notes or to fit more text into the low character limit of an SMS, but it is unacceptable in formal writing.
Usage of foreign letters such as k, j and y, especially in nicknames and SMS language: ke instead of che, Giusy instead of Giuseppina (or sometimes Giuseppe). This is curiously mirrored in the usage of i in English names such as Staci instead of Stacey, or in the usage of c in Northern Europe (Jacob instead of Jakob). The use of "k" instead of "ch" or "c" to represent a plosive sound is documented in some historical texts from before the standardization of the Italian language; however, that usage is no longer standard in Italian. Possibly because it is associated with the German language, the letter "k" has sometimes also been used in satire to suggest that a political figure is an authoritarian or even a "pseudo-nazi": Francesco Cossiga was famously nicknamed Kossiga by rioting students during his tenure as minister of internal affairs. [Cf. the politicized spelling Amerika in the
Use of the following abbreviations is limited to the electronic communications media and is deprecated in all other cases: nn instead of non (not), cmq instead of comunque (anyway, however), cm instead of come (how, like, as), d instead of di (of), (io/loro) sn instead of (io/loro) sono (I am/they are), (io) dv instead of (io) devo (I must/I have to) or instead of dove (where), (tu) 6 instead of (tu) sei (you are).
Whenever ASCII characters are not available, or when they cannot be relied on, for example in emails, sometimes accents are replaced by apostrophes for convenience, such as in perche' instead of perché (this was standard in the days of manual typewriters that had no accents, and is still common for upper case letters). Uppercase È is particularly rare, as it is absent from the Italian keyboard layout, and is very often written as E' (even though there are several ways of producing the uppercase È on a computer). This never happens in books or other professionally typeset material. On the other hand, many people confuse the grave and the acute accent, and write perchè instead of perché or caffé instead of caffè, since these two accents are usually written in the same way in handwriting.
